Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Let’s Play A Lightning Round Game

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:] Source: LYBIO.net
Thank you Chair, so um… let’s play a game. Let’s play a lightning round game. I’m going to be the bad guy, which I’m sure half the room would agree with anyway and I want to get away with as much bad things as possible, ideally to enrich myself and advance my interests, even if that means putting – putting my interests ahead of the American people. So, Mrs. Hobert Flynn – Oh, and by the way, I have enlisted all of you as my co-conspirators. So you’re gonna help me legally get away with all of this. So, Mrs. Hobert Flynn, I want to run. If I want to run a campaign that is entirely funded by corporate political action committees, is there anything that legally prevents me from doing that?

[Mrs. Hobert Flynn:]
No.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:] Source: LYBIO.net
Okay. So, there’s nothing stopping me from being entirely funded by corporate PACs, say, from the fossil-fuel industry, the healthcare industry, Big Pharma, entirely, 100% lobbyist PAC-funded. Okay. So, let’s say I’m a really, really bad guy. And let’s say I have some skeletons in my closet that I need to cover up so that I can get elected. Mr. Smith, is it true that you wrote this article, this opinion piece for “The Washington Post” entitled “payments to women were unseemly, that doesn’t mean they were illegal”?

[Mr. Smith:] Source: LYBIO.net
Well, I can’t see the piece, but I wrote a piece under that headline in “The Post,” so I assume that’s right.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
Okay. Great. So, green light for hush money. I can do all sorts of terrible things. It’s totally legal right now for me to pay people off, and that is considered speech. That money is considered speech. So, I use my special-interest, dark-money-funded campaign to pay off folks that I need to pay off and get elected. So, now I’m elected. Now I’m in. I’ve got the power to draft, lobby, and shape the laws that govern the United States of America. Fabulous. Now, is there any hard limit that I have, perhaps Mrs. Hobert Flynn – is there any hard limit that I have in terms of what legislation I’m allowed to touch? Are there are any limits on the laws that I can write or influence, especially if I’m – based on the special-interest funds that I accepted to finance my campaign and get me elected in the first place?

[Mrs. Hobert Flynn:]
There’s no limit.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
So, there’s none. So I can be totally funded by oil and gas. I can be totally funded by Big Pharma, come in, write Big Pharma laws, and there’s no limits to that whatsoever.

[Mrs. Hobert Flynn:]
That’s right.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
Okay. So, awesome. Now, Mr. Mehrbani, the last thing I want to do is get rich with as little work possible. That’s really what I’m trying to do as the bad guy, right? So, is there anything preventing me from holding stocks, say, in an oil or gas company and then writing laws to de-regulate that industry and cause – you know, that could potentially cause the stock value to soar and accrue a lot of money in that time?

[Mr. Mehrbani:]
You could do that.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
So, I could do that. I could do that now with the way our current laws are set up? Yes?

[Mr. Mehrbani:]
Yes.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
Oh, okay. Great. Okay, so, my last question is – or one of my last questions, I guess I’d say, is, is it possible that any elements of this story apply to our current government and our current public servants right now?

[Mr. Mehrbani:]
Yes.

[Mrs. Hobert Flynn:]
Yes.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
So, we have a system that is fundamentally broken. We have these influences existing in this body, which means that these influences are here in this committee, shaping the questions that are being asked of you all right now. Would you say that that’s correct, Mr. Mehrbani or Mr. Shaub?

[Mr. Mehrbani:]
Yes.

[Mr. Shaub:]
Yes.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
All right. So, one last thing, Mr. Shaub – in relation to congressional oversight that we have, the limits that are placed on me as a congresswoman, compared to the executive branch and compared to, say, the President of the United States, would you say that Congress has the same sort of standard of accountability? Is there more teeth in that regulation in Congress on the president, or would you say it’s about even or more so on the federal?

[Mr. Shaub:]
In terms of laws that apply to the president, yeah, there’s almost no laws at all that apply to the president.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
So, I’m being held and every person in this body’s being held to a higher ethical standard than the President of the United States.

[Mr. Shaub:]
That’s right ’cause there are some Ethics Committee rules that apply to you.

[Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:]
And it’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it’s even easier for the President of the United States to be one, I would assume.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Let’s Play A Lightning Round Game. And it’s already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it’s even easier for the President of the United States to be one, I would assume. Complete Full Transcript, Dialogue, Remarks, Saying, Quotes, Words And Text.